How Parenting Made Me a Better Product Leader

Read The Transcript:

We’re trying out transcribing our podcasts using a software program. Please forgive any typos as the bot isn’t correct 100% of the time.

Hannah Clark: Whether we admit it or not, our personal lives and professional lives are more intertwined than ever—after all, remote work is less about taking your work with you and more about folding it into the broader context of your life. Today’s conversation explores something we rarely discuss openly; how becoming a parent fundamentally reshapes your approach to product leadership. And as a parent myself, let me just say that negotiating a bedtime routine and managing stakeholder expectations ain’t so different.

My guest today is Anuj Jhunjhunwala, Director of Product at Merge, who spent 15 years building a career across finance and tech, including stints at Lyft and various startups. But it’s his newest role as a dad that’s teaching him unexpected lessons about influence without authority, communicating without filters, and why career growth might be more like charting a path up a mountain than climbing a ladder.

You’ll hear his refreshingly honest takes on everything from how becoming a parent forces you to time-box like never before, and why managing toddlers might be the ultimate training ground for product management. Plus, we tackle some of the paradoxes of modern product leadership that trip up even experience PMs. Let’s jump in.

Oh, by the way, we hold conversations like this every week. So if this sounds interesting to you, why not subscribe? Okay, now let’s jump in.

Welcome back to the Product Manager podcast. I’m here with Anuj Jhunjhunwala. He’s the Director of Product at Merge.

Anuj, thank you for joining me today.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Thanks for having me on. I’m so excited.

Hannah Clark: So today we’re gonna be focusing on how parenting really impacts our approach to product leadership. So I’m a parent and Anuj you’re a parent, and that’s great, but not everyone who’s listening is gonna be a parent, and that’s okay.

I think that our goal today is just to make these insights applicable. What’s the insider intel from the parents to the non-parents? What can you learn from having to take care of little humans about managing big humans? To kick us off Anuj, what has been the biggest impact of parenting on your approach to product leadership?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, totally. I think there’s a few things that come to mind. I have two small kids, one’s four years old and one’s six months old. It’s funny, a few years ago before having the first kid, I would never have thought that there’s a link here at all. And obviously there’s a million different ways that there are difference between, being a PM and having kids.

But I think it forces you out of your comfort zone, right? Like physically, you are constantly tired and the responsibility you have over another human is just on a completely different level than anything you’ve done before this. And so I’ve seen it do things to me on a personal level that have translated well to what I do at work.

So the first thing is like toddlers simply just don’t have any filters, right? They react with raw emotion to everything they do. It’s largely physical, right? They like literally cannot manage their emotions. They don’t know how to do that. And in a funny way, it’s like a very interesting opportunity to reflect on how I handle, very candid speaking talking to someone who does not filter their emotions at all.

And it’s funny how like companies spend a lot of time and energy creating this environment of radical candor and not overly masking our emotions. And so in a lot of ways it has made me more level-headed, right? How do I remove the emotion from the conversation we’re having and really try to guide this to where I want it to go?

Which kind of leads me to the second point, which is that you have to communicate very concisely, right? So long explanations don’t work with a toddler. You’re not gonna sit down and be like, this is why you have to go to bed now. There’s no essay or you can write, or long speech you can give here. You have to really just condense down what you’re trying to say.

And it’s not about forming the best argument or having the most well-reasoned explanation. It’s about, how do I boil down whatever I’m trying to say to the essence so that I can be effective, which I’m still working on. I don’t know if I’ve like perfectly gotten it down to a science of how to get someone to sleep.

It’s hard to do that. Which maybe reads to the third point, which is that you’re always just experimenting, right? So as parents, I think we’re, none of us really know what we’re doing, we are just relying on instinct for, is it obvious? Yeah, it’s instinct. It’s like some mix of the same parenting podcasts and books that we all read.

There’s a lot of ChatGPT at this point, honestly, a mix of the two or three where I’m like asking ChatGPT what like certain parenting experts would say about certain things. And so I think we’re just like constantly tweaking what are we doing to see what outcome we want to get. Which is, the outcomes are very stark when it comes to parenting.

It, it’s very concrete did that time go smoothly or are we still arguing at 10:00 PM about why you should be going to sleep? And so the takeaway there is that it’s okay to figure things out as you go. And I feel like product management is one of those things where you feel like you perfectionism, I think it kinda like naturally tracks type a perfectionist.

It’s okay to not know what you’re doing. It’s okay to figure out as you go, because the reality is you’re gonna figure it out as you go. There’s gonna be new challenges you haven’t thought about, and there’s gonna be new ways of doing things or new team members or new dynamics on the team that you need to work with.

And so it’s been a very refreshing exercise and just like taking a step back and thinking about, I don’t have the answer to everything, and that’s totally fine. Those are three things that come to mind. I know I’m gonna come up with other things over the years, but this is just some early reflections,

Hannah Clark: those all resonate with me strongly and kinda when you’re talking about trying to condense things to the essence. Something that popped into my mind is like, and also try and frame it in a way where it sounds like it serves their best interest in a way that they understand, which I think is also very applicable to, the work you’re doing.

Like you’re not just trying to get your point across, but you’re also trying to communicate what’s in it for them. That’s a constant struggle where I’m, my instinct is to try and argue from my perspective, defend my point of view. But ultimately, if I wanna be like, I have to choose, do I want to be right or do I wanna be effective? And so to be effective, I really have to be meeting, I have a three-year-old, so I have to be meeting him where he is and that is a practice and an art.

Yeah, that kind of leads into on the next question, which is, you’ve described parenting before as the ultimate test of influencing without authority, which I love. How has this perspective shaped your management style and stakeholder relationships? I have a few ideas, but I’d love to hear it from you.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, totally. I think the big thing here is that no matter who you’re working with, if it’s a three-year-old or coworkers and obviously again like very different situations, but you can’t really change someone, right?

You can’t force someone to do something that they ultimately don’t wanna do. So there’s no world in which, even though you’re the parent here, and in a lot of ways, being a parent is authority, right? You cannot force a 4-year-old to eat their vegetables or to go to bed by a certain time. They have to wanna do it.

And so it comes back to persuasion and storytelling, which is a lot of what as a product manager you’re doing, right? And so how do you create the right environment in which your stakeholders understand your thought process? Why is this all important? How does this all kind of tie together? So much of this job is, it ties back to that storytelling piece that really resonates with having kids.

I know it contradicts the previous point about being concise, but it still comes back to the same point of if you wanna run faster, like you gotta eat your vegetables, right? If you wanna have energy tomorrow morning, you have to go to sleep sooner. And it’s like this, almost like this vision of, what you’re gonna do tomorrow and why today matters for you concisely again, and then repeating yourself.

So just making sure that you, in anything you do, right? So much of this job is just repeating yourself constantly across different mediums, whether it’s a doc, and then you say the same thing in Slack and they say a thing same thing in all hands. I dunno. There’s interesting parallels here where it’s trying to incept or inflect a behavior change on someone else.

And the way you do that is just through the sheer art of persuasion and storytelling and getting someone else to understand your point of view and like why you want it to happen, which is just a really fascinating kind of connection that I never in a million years would’ve thought about making between these two very different things.

Hannah Clark: Sorry, I have to jump in with this because this is, I’ve been on this same kind of thought train recently and it’s so funny how your approach to your career influences your parenting style and vice versa. And my background is in marketing. A breakthrough that I recently had because like food is a constant, if food is a constant battle.

And I realized everything exists on YouTube. Like the mediums and the channels that speak to my child are not so different from the marketing mediums that speak to users. So why am I not using that skillset to my advantage? My kid does not respond well to me, just verbally saying it’s like a, the difference between a sales call, like a cold call versus having them go through the whole customer journey of like, why, what I want them to do is the right thing to do.

So for example, my kid currently is just in such a resistant food picky phase and I wanted to make spaghetti and meatballs, which is a new food for him. And so I thought, you know what? I’m not going in cold. I’m gonna market spaghetti and meatballs to him. We’re gonna watch YouTube videos about spaghetti and meatballs, how great they are.

And he is gonna see other kids loving them and gonna see cartoon spaghetti meatballs bouncing around and sure enough cleaned his plate. And I’m like, I have unlocked a breakthrough here. Like you have to market to your kids sometimes. If you wanna get over that hump of, there’s gonna be resistance, like you have to really apply some of that skillset into the job.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: No, totally. In many ways it’s playing it on hard mode with a toddler, just because they, again, like to the first point, there’s the emotions are just so raw and unfiltered, and you don’t see that in the workplace, right? There’s times when you talk to someone and maybe join a new company, and the culture’s very different, and the response you get is much more blunt than you’re expecting, and it’s kinda whoa.

That was like not expected with a toddler, it’s just like that for four hours a day. More than that, right? You just it’s just unfiltered. And it’s because they don’t know how to filter themselves. And so it’s how do you react to that? How do you work with that? How do you mold them, anticipate it and mold them into adults and, bigger kids after that.

And yeah, it’s just, it’s interesting how much there’s a connection here that, again, I would never have put these things together, but it’s all, we’re all learning lessons as we go,

Hannah Clark: oh, for sure. And I think that it’s nice to have this, yeah, it really forces you to question your assumptions ’cause you realize that as we get older, we still feel the same emotions. We’re just better at managing and masking them.

If you get in the habit at home of boiling things down and kind of meeting people where they’re at, I think that really just makes you I found this made me a more effective communicator in general. But anyway, we can talk about this specific point probably for an entire episode. Let’s move on.

So let’s talk about in some inherent contradictions in product management. We’ll depart from parenting for just a moment. So what are some of the paradoxes you’ve encountered throughout your career that have contradictory? You’ve mentioned a few already.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, I think there’s a few that come to mind, and I’m happy to go deeper on any of these. It’s like the first one that has been more applicable, the further I’ve gotten in my career is people will always want you to say yes to certain things, both internally and externally at your company, but they’re also way more, they’re significantly more okay with you saying no than you think they are.

That’s the first one. The second one is, I think the way you write is extremely important, but no one reads anything, both and like internally and externally. And I think that’s just because people have a lot of things going on and everyone’s attention is more precious now than it has ever been. And the third thing is that career growth seems linear, but is absolutely not.

That last one may be less of a paradox or a contradiction and just like a, something that just took me by surprise starting out my career. It seems so linear when you’re just starting out and then over time you realize that it absolutely is not.

Hannah Clark: I am a little bit curious about your, the non-linear career thing ’cause you’re talking a little bit about applying skill sets and it’s funny. I think you realize as you go through these transitions, whether it’s from one job title to the next, or from a non-parent to a parent, a lot of the skills that you accumulate over time are actually a lot more applicable than you expected.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, I think it’s actually funny. So when you start off in, I remember early in my career, I would read the Wikipedia page for some CEO or famous person, right? And it’s always very succinct in a way. It’s like this person graduated from college in 2000, they started working at this company by 2007.

They were like head of North America 2010, their global head 2015, their CEO. You’re like, wow, that’s very linear. They just kept growing up in this company, and it feels like you’re, there’s just so much detail in there that you’re not seeing in that article, and like no one goes into depth about the decision making process that took them from starting at this company to then becoming head of North America, it is just like a, that’s a big jump and there’s a lot hidden in that seven years that you don’t read about. Partly, I think there’s a selection bias, right? Because you’re seeing how successful people got to where they are and you think, how do I get to that point? The reality I think, is that when you’re doing the work and trying to get to the next level and grow your career, it’s not a checklist, right? Nor is it this like linear ladder up these different rungs. It’s more like you’re charting your path up a hill and there’s like multiple different paths you can get there. Sometimes you have to go through the forest a little bit and the skills that get you a promotion aren’t necessarily the skills that make you successful in that next role.

When you get to the next role, you have a different criteria, different rule book, a different set of a rubric, that you’re being compared against. And so something I’ve realized more and more over time is. Your career is a product itself, right? You just happen to be the user of it. And so it’s all about just, again, like if you would think about any other thing as a product.

What are your specific needs? What do you do really well that other people don’t, and what are your gaps? What do you do? Not as well as other people. Just really introspect and think about what those, what are the jobs, what are the roles or things that you want to do that push yourself on those gaps and make yourself better, and get you to the next level where you can then stretch on some other things as well.

When I started out, I was like managing people is this like milestone that I have to have? It’s not for everyone, right? There are PMs that are way better as ICs and want to go down that path. So really just think about what is it that you want to get out of it. It’s not checking the box, it’s this random path up a hill.

And I have to think about, what does that path look like? Because this can be different for everyone.

Hannah Clark: Yeah I really agree and I think that this is something that I’ve learned early in my career that I’ve always been sensitive to is that strong ICs don’t necessarily make strong leaders.

Leadership and management is a skillset of its own, and you can be an awesome leader and not that good of an IC. We equate them, but they do take a very specific set of competencies. And leadership specifically is an interesting one because it’s not really something that you learn to excel at until you’re already in that capacity.

You can have a lot of qualities that help you develop faster, and you may might have an aptitude for it, but I had a conversation recently with Andrew Saxe at Smartling about how that’s something that I’m wondering is maybe a byproduct of this AI revolution. Whether, because we’re now operating as overseers of sort of digital interns, whether it’s going to start to indoctrinate like more of a managerial resource management mindset into people before they reach a leadership level.

But of course you have to layer on like the soft skills and that kind of thing. So I don’t know. There might be something there.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: That’s really interesting. Yeah. It’s almost like an intern that stays an intern forever. Obviously the models get better over time, but like you’re learning how to delegate in a lot of ways without having to manage the upward trajectory of this person or this not person, that’s really interesting. I, yeah I’m curious obviously I think we’re all in the same boat here trying to figure out where AI goes and how it helps us in our careers, like in a few years. Sorry. Yeah, that, that was a fascinating point I just wanted to jump in on.

Hannah Clark: It’s one that I’ve been interested in exploring.

I think it’s interesting to see how that shift in mindset, like obviously we’re gonna be using the tools more effectively and the baseline capabilities of AI are going to grow with us. So yeah, it might stay an intern forever. Which also begs the question what becomes of the interns? Like what’s the pathway to becoming a subject matter expert? It might be that you just become a really good manager really early. That’s kinda cool. Back on track.

I do wanna talk a little bit more about your other assertion that no one reads anything. As a editor of a publication, I take offense to that. No, I’m just kidding. I actually think I, you’re absolutely right. That’s why we have such growth in mediums like this one. You know so much as a video first and people’s attention spans dwindle. There’s so much stuff that’s competing for our attention, but how do you reckon with that? How have you navigated that in your work?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, totally. I think I’m definitely one of those people who obsesses over every word, when it comes to writing things in college, for example, or, yeah, I guess college is a great example. Like I, I would spend more time editing than I spent actually writing the initial draft, right?

And just like constantly refining the words. I think, obviously good writing absolutely makes a difference, right? So there’s the storytelling piece again, which is, why should we build this thing? What did we learn from this experiment? What’s our vision for the product or for the company?

And all of that needs to be expressed. And I think there’s writing as an exercise and like carving out time to do that is a great way to refine your own thoughts and think about structuring arguments. And just putting words on paper is super valuable as an exercise. I think the reality also is that people, to the point of the contradiction, just don’t have time to read everything, right?

So everyone’s busy, everyone’s got a million Slack messages and emails and things to do. Prior to this, obviously I was at Lyft, which is, B2C, and then you’re, if you have competitors, there’s other, they can take an Uber, they can just sit at home and watch Netflix instead of going somewhere, right?

So there’s like physically a limit to the amount of time people can spend reading anything you put in front of them. One thing that’s always kinda struck me as interesting is that even Amazon, is famous for these like six page memos and carving out time to read these things. They have to carve out the time in the meeting to read it because they know that prior to the meeting, no one’s gonna read it.

They don’t have time to read it. And so I think what really this translates to is it’s really just about making yourself impossible to ignore. So bullets, bolding, making sure you highlight the right things, making sure that you write TLDR is the top of documents so that people. What are the three things about the stock that I have to take away?

If this is not something that I’m interested in, I can move on to the next thing. And then just repeating yourself across multiple channels. So in the doc itself, in Slack, in a meeting, in your all hands, finding your audience for whatever it is that you’re trying to say, and finding the audience, meeting the audience where they wanna be met, and what forum or medium works best for them.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. Now we’re drifting right back into the overlap with parenting. Where you have to repeat yourself so many times in so many contexts, and it’s maddening, but it also starts to make sense because you realize that people, generally speaking, really don’t absorb new information easily the first time, and especially if you’re asking them to adopt a behavior.

Yeah, repetition is critical. I spoke to Debbie McMahon at the Financial Times about this as well, where she’s she’s a CPO and she’s still beating the drum of you have to continue to repeat yourself way more than you think you have to. Because communication that’s effective isn’t about being like I told you, and therefore you should know.

It’s about making sure that it’s landing, like you said, with your audience, and that’s something that I’m having to remind myself constantly. It’s oh my goodness, like how many times do I have to tell you how to wash your hands? I know you know how to do this, but sometimes a change in context really can feel like it’s a new thing. There’s new rules like that behavior hasn’t really locked in yet. It’s not second nature, and that takes a lot of time. Impatience. But anyway, let’s move right on.

So now we’re talking about outcomes and naturally efficiency as well. We’re talking about as well, how has your thinking about efficiency and outcomes evolved since you’ve become a parent and you’ve got more of a premium on the time in a day?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: I think quite literally, it just forces me to time box things to an extent that I was not doing before. There’s some people who are just really good at I, this is my work time. I’m gonna get as much done as I can here, and then I’m at home, or I’m doing something else and I’m tuned off, right? I think I was never really good at that separation.

So with kids, you have no choice, right? I’m at the office from X to X or X to Y, and in this time I have to get as much done as I can because I know when I get home, if I open up my laptop in front of my kids, A it’s just not great for a relationship. You wanna make sure that you separate these things out.

B, my son wants to just play with my laptop, so physically I cannot get work done if I’m sitting next to them. And so I just have to make sure that, the overall amount of work that I need to do does not change. It’s, there’s still expectations. There’s still things that I have to get done, and so I just have to make sure that I’m still as productive as I can be during the day.

So I think it really just comes down to, it’s been a really strong forcing function for me to make sure that I compartmentalize and make sure that I’m as productive as I can be when I’m at the office, because this is my time to get work done. It really helps to separate these things and make sure that I’m as productive as I can be.

Hannah Clark: Yeah I’m finding the same thing. In my journey, I feel like there’s, from time to time I have to really sit down and look at my routine, especially when there’s a big change. If you have, you start a school and you’ve got that to take into account, or you have a new project or something that’s impacted the way that you need to run your time.

Sometimes I’ll have to sit down and think, okay, the way that I was managing my time before, it’s no longer serving me. How do I need to rearrange my week or my every other week or my month in order to ensure that I’ve appropriately delegated myself time to do these things because yeah, just like you.

I know that before daycare and after pickup, it’s not happening. So like that time you really had to take it so seriously and be so deliberate. And I think that also really forces you to prioritize too. Like you really have to be thinking very consciously, what are the things that are a non-negotiable for this day, and that I find is nice.

It’s simplified my life in a way where, there was a time when I didn’t have those same limitations and it was just like a free for all, which meant sometimes it would just do a lot of low hanging fruit, which was good. It would feel productive, but the big stuff would just flounder, but now that it’s like no, this is my time to tack away at the big stuff and then the low hanging fruit can wait.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Totally. The low leverage stuff can be something that, like I we’re making a big question I think a lot of companies do in this, right? Where, how do you use AI to just move faster internally? And how do you the low leverage stuff is the stuff that’s so easy to automate away. And this is a strong forcing function for, I could spend 30 minutes doing this, or I could find a way to write a script or do something that just does it for me.

And you’re forced to do that, which is kinda refreshing in the sense that it really does let you focus on the high priority things and you’re like, I have nine hours to do this. I just have to do it, which is honestly refreshing in a way to be able to focus like that.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. You realize how many little things in your day kind of chip away at your focus and your mental energy and it really doesn’t take, I don’t know, I can’t speak for everybody.

I find that it really takes a lot less than I think to do such a significant dent into my mental energy that it’s like I just feels like that big thing that I want to get around to it seems insurmountable. So yeah, like doing what you can. And I do think that there is something to be said about finding ways to honor that time, block it away, automate, whatever you can do to protect time and be conscious of your own shortcomings, not just as a parent.

We’re always so aware of those, but as, yeah, as a functioning human being, as a person on a team, like being aware that, you know what, like if I really, if this thing that I’m trying to do requires my full focus for a day, and if I even attempt to do any context switching, I’m gonna derail my whole self.

I have to be aware of that and not try and work against it. So yeah, it’s I think that has been a big breakthrough for me also, like in parenting is like really being more deliberate about making choices that align with the real me and not the me that I wanna be, and trying to really meet myself where I’m at, ’cause yeah, like you’re not just trying to meet your kid, you’re also trying to meet yourself. Make sure that you are taking care of yourself.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Totally. It’s a delicate balance.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. I feel like this is a theoretical conversation in some ways, but it’s really hitting.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yep.

Hannah Clark: We’ll pivot away from parenting for a little while longer.

So you spent some time at Lyft and you mentioned you wanted to return to like more of a faster, like a smaller environment. And this is interesting because I think that smaller environments have pros and cons, just like enterprises. So what specific advantages have you found in smaller companies as far as outcome deliverables? And are you happy with your decision?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Oh yeah, totally. There’s a few things that come to mind in how smaller companies ship faster that I’ve seen. So I think one thing is that there’s stronger context across the team, right? So it’s like when we say we’re gonna build something, or this is a problem, we need to fix the amount of work he needs to do to convince someone that is the case is just much lower because everyone is naturally closer to the customer.

They’re naturally closer to the problem. So what used to be a long document or a series of meetings in which you’re like, build this case, we’re doing something at a smaller co company is oh yeah, this is obvious. This is clear. We should do this. So that’s one thing. You just move faster because of that naturally.

I think the second thing is tactically you just have fewer layers of approval as well, so there’s no running up the chain, five layers to get something approved. The company’s much more flat. It’s just smaller. There’s fewer people. There’s fewer ways to structure a pyramid like this. I think the last thing is that smaller company, especially a startup, especially one that is in an industry where you have to move fast, like software, like there is no mode, right?

You just have to out execute everyone else. Is that I think you have a selection bias for people who just wanna work hard, right? Like you don’t come here to rest, invest. You come here to build something and see that payoff directly into this product that you have a lot of influence over. And so I think those kind of three things come together, right?

Like you have a team that’s just very close to what they’re doing, such that you don’t have to convince people to a strong degree internally to do something because people understand the problem inherently. And then you have this group of people that just wants to work hard. And those two things together means that you have people who are type A, willing to grind, who can take this problem they see and have high agency in fixing it.

And I think that kind of, that at some big companies, but it’s the fact that there’s just more layers means that the bigger company moves at just a different speed. And they both have the pros and cons, honestly, but that’s just what I’ve enjoyed about working at a smaller company.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, I think this honestly ties back a lot into that knowing yourself piece. Because I think the environment, again, it just about knowing what kind of environment has the payoff that you need to feel energized about the work, which is I think another, we’re talking about driving factors.

Like where you’re gonna find that satisfaction in the role. And I’ve talked to people on all areas of the spectrum as far as the environments that they’re drawn into. And I can totally, I appreciate and identify with what you’re saying about being drawn to the small company mindset, that really agile, reactive, tight team.

I think that’s, for me, I really see that sweet spot as a team that’s still small, but in growth mode where things are exciting. Maybe you’ve just found product market fit, you’re really starting to take off. And that excitement and the energy and the kinda, and that the scent of success really seems to galvanize the team to really buy into the vision.

And I really love that energy. But it’s funny how, the fundamental way that a team operates changes as the company matures and then you can start to find that you lose that same energy because you lose that peace that you really resonated with that Got you so energized in the first place.

I know people who feel like they are at their absolute best solving the problems of a company that’s like really in scale up mode. And to me that’s oh, that is so stressful. Great for you, but that’s everybody’s got their thing that they’re drawn to. There’s folks who just really thrive in that enterprise environment where they really like the intricacies of, that level of business.

And so it’s interesting too that, that we’re talking about seeing yourself in your career and you’re making your career product and being aware of like yourself as a user. What are your preferences? What are you drawn to? How do you market your own career to yourself?

And if your environment is fundamentally changing ’cause of the nature of the business, not taking that personally, just realizing that maybe this is just not aligned with what keeps you going.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, totally. And also recognizing that, so your needs are gonna change over time and the company is gonna change over time and there are times when you might be interested in different things, and that’s totally fine, right? There’s a world where someone who’s fresh outta college, junior in their career might be better served at a startup or might be better served at a bigger company, right? If you thrive in kind of ambiguous spaces and driving forward things, knowing that there might not be a clear answer, then you’re probably better off at a startup.

But if you want the resources of a bigger company, then a bigger company makes more sense. And it’s like this trade off where you have to like really think about it. It’s not gonna be the same answer for everyone. And that’s again, totally fine.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, like I think that’s, again, I’m tying it back to parenting, but I feel like that’s another thing that you recognize as you get to know your child and their nuances, you recognize that a behavior, for example, that maybe is unpleasant isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It’s an indicator, but it’s if my kid is really stubborn and really set in his ways and it’s, it’s, it may be irritating to me in the moment as the person who’s responsible for him. It’s but this also points to a characteristic about him. And it’s, like you’re yeah seeing the world through that lens is pretty transformative because you start to you stop ascribing like moral values to things and just more of things, seeing them as oh, this is an indicator. This is just like a…

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: It is what it is. Yeah.

Hannah Clark: It is what it is, and you just have to roll with it.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yep, totally. I hear you.

Hannah Clark: This is a very different kind of conversation than what we normally have because I feel like there’s something here that is just a lot bigger than work. I really feel like the essence of this conversation is really just like seeing how parenting just changes the way that you see the world and you I don’t know it, that’s a very nothing statement, but does that make sense?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Yeah, no, it totally does. It’s in switching careers, every job you have, you take away something from it, right? And it all contributes back to the next job. And like how you improve in your career and kind of move your way up. It’s no different here. Like parenting is a different thing you’re doing and you learn something from it.

Again, we’re all just trying to figure this out as we go. And so it’s all about taking what you’ve learned, applying it, really pushing yourself and thinking about where you want to go with it and experimenting, which is kinda the fun of it.

Hannah Clark: The fun of it indeed. Thank you so much for joining me, Anuj. This was really enjoyable. It’s really nice to be able to talk about our learned experiences outside of work and kind of, I don’t know, I like talking about my son.

Where can people follow your work online?

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Thanks for having me here. This was great. I really enjoyed the conversation. LinkedIn is probably best.

I’m trying to post a little bit more there, so just search for me and I look forward to connecting. This is really exciting stuff to talk through.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, likewise. Thanks so much for joining us.

Anuj Jhunjhunwala: Appreciate it. Take care.

Hannah Clark: Thanks for listening in. For more great insights, how-to guides and tool reviews, subscribe to our newsletter at theproductmanager.com/subscribe. You can hear more conversations like this by subscribing to the Product Manager wherever you get your podcasts.